


Bite back

by readythefanons



Series: The Big Apple [4]
Category: Daredevil (TV)
Genre: Gen, Karen/some sense of justice, Unrequited
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-05-06
Updated: 2016-05-06
Packaged: 2018-06-06 20:02:18
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,120
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6768097
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/readythefanons/pseuds/readythefanons
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>When Karen gets angry, she doesn’t go up like dynamite. She freezes. It’s like her mind and her body are one step removed. Her body stays still while her mind screams on ahead.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Bite back

A man comes into the office with a case. He’s got a manner so muted he’s offputting, but he’s got a case and that’s all that matters.

It’s interesting to see Nelson and Murdock at work instead of Foggy and Matt hanging around the office. Foggy is gregarious and has the gift of the gab. Matt is quiet, and he’s far less invested in snapping up a (paying) client than his partner. Karen is having a grand old time right up until the man from Confederated Global Investments turns his attention to her.

_Threat._ She doesn’t know who he is or what he’s threatening her with, much less what power he has to bring to bear if he decides to go through with whatever it is. Her heart is rabbiting in her chest as she goes out to her desk in the front of the office. She’s got just enough time before he leaves to figure out that the man was probably more interested in controlling Matt and Foggy than controlling her. She stays silent and he walks right past her. Matt follows, then Foggy. Karen researches Confederated Global Investments until lunchtime, when she reapplies the makeup on her neck and heads across town to the offices of Union Allied Construction. 

She’s almost expecting to meet with Mr. McClintock, but instead it’s a man from Legal. The department is big enough that he wasn’t Danny’s boss, but Karen thinks they probably knew each other. He reminds her she violated her nondisclosure agreement when she exposed the corruption at play in Union Allied Construction. He tries to convince her to sign an agreement never to talk about what happened, and he offers her money in exchange for her silence. He does all of this with a soft voice and his big face curving into understanding lines. Karen wants to scream. She’s an inconvenience and now she’s being _handled._ This man is being gentle with her because it will be so much more convenient if she goes quietly, but if she kicks up a fuss he has an entire legal team to bring to bear on her. 

Karen has known people who wear their hearts on their sleeves. (Foggy is like this, she is already sure. Matt is a closed book, but Karen suspects it is by training rather than nature.) She has observed people who become toweringly angry, shouting and stomping around as if their own bodies are not enough to contain their emotions. She has studied them, tried to memorize the performance of such feeling. Karen does not feel in that manner. She knows how to _express_ her emotions—but it’s not the same. When Karen gets angry, she doesn’t go up like dynamite. She freezes. It’s like her mind and her body are one step removed. Her body stays still while her mind screams on ahead.

She freezes now. Union Allied feels a nonbinding moral obligation to offer the chance at rebuilding her life. She will be awarded a lump sum of six months’ salary—as long as she keeps her mouth shut. She exposed her boss’s corruption, and if she goes quietly and swears not to say another word about it, Union Allied won’t sue her into the ground. The makeup caked onto her neck itches. Her head is still tender. Her pulse still clings to the memory of adrenaline, skittering at the least provocation. Union Allied will give her money to go away like a good girl, _compensation for any stress these events may have caused._

They killed Danny and tried to kill her, and they are going to get away with it because they have money and all the power it brings.

They are going to get away with it.

Fuck that.

_Fuck that._

All of the important parts of Karen go away. The man tries to get her to sign the agreement, but she demurs. She takes the form “for her lawyers” and takes her leave. Outside the building, she walks two blocks and stops in a coffee shop. Her pulse settles as she waits for her drink, and her ability to think anything except _fuck that_ returns. She slips back into the office and says something meaningless about a long lunch. She throws herself at researching Confederated Global and lets her anger simmer. She goes home and figures out where Danny lived. She looks up his wife and figures out when she’ll probably be at home.

Jennifer Fisher is impressive. Strong, put together, practical. Karen can see why Danny loved her. If they had met in another situation—introducing the coworker and wife at a company meeting maybe, without the gulf of loss and trauma and death—maybe they would have been friends. Karen would have liked to be friends.

Jennifer has already signed the agreement and Karen can’t blame her. She goes to see her plan B. 

Ben Urich is wary, but Karen thinks there’s a glimmer of well-hidden interest there. She hopes there’s some well-hidden interest there. She’s pretty sure she’s going to get herself killed if Ben isn’t on board, but she needs to take down whoever was behind Mr. McClintock, needs some sort of justice. 

When Ben doesn’t look like he’s going to bite, she turns to plan C: go it alone. The beauty of plan C is that it leaves the option of reverting to plan B if she finds something solid enough to tempt Ben. She’s sitting in the back of an auction of Union Allied’s office supplies when Ben appears at her back. 

He warns her she’s drawing attention to herself. She follows his instructions on blending in and meets him in a nearby diner. Karen was right—the old reporter is interested. But he didn’t get to be an _old_ investigative reporter by being incautious. He lays down some ground rules and Karen agrees to them. She would agree to just about anything. Her blood is up, but she thinks she and Ben have that in common, and that makes all the difference. She signs the agreement from Union Allied that afternoon and then heads to the offices of Nelson and Murdock. Her blood is humming in a way that it hasn’t since—since college, since before she changed majors, since she spiraled so hard she only just managed to put herself back together again. She ignores it, doesn’t think about it unless she’s staring at her ceiling in the wee hours of the night. She ripped her own life apart back then. This time somebody did it for her, and she’s just trying to put the pieces back together. It’s different.

It takes a long time to fall asleep, but at least she’s sleeping again.


End file.
